Stef found it a bit embarrassing to admit that the family tree had such odd characters. Robert Fulton may have been ridiculed for "Fulton's Folly", but his designs of a steamboat and a submarine gave him the last laugh and earned him historical footnotes in many books on maritime history.
Ned Land is best known for the Jules Verne's fictionalized adventure story, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Ned insisted that much of that adventure really did occur and when Professor Aronnax, shared it with his friend Jules, they agreed to rewrite some of the sequences, change some names, throw in some existing locations, and call it fiction. Some of the inventions he witnessed did seem unbelievable to the average sailor/harpooner. Some even amazed Professor Pierre Aronnax. When Verne's book gained worldwide popularity, Ned was content to know that he had been a part of those adventures.
Ned Land met Sir Steven Payne through their mutual friend Professor Aronnax. Sir Steven had traveled to France in search of financial backing for scientific exploration of the seas using the maps and steam mapper device he had stolen in Perth.
His British friends, would feel betrayed by the sleight of hand and distractions he had caused at the dinner party where he stole the devices and maps he had been hired to protect. These devices and a small submersible had been brought from Sydney by way of a gaseous ship, a dirigible capable of crossing the continent of Australia. Sir Steven had changed locks during the voyage from England and examined the contents out of curiosity. The discovery and magnitude of importance of the contents, so amazed Sir Steven as to cause him to decide he had to have those instruments through "hook or crook". He knew that his Perth hosts must be aghast at his brash thievery. Bridges had been burned. He could not count on their benevolence ever again. (The theft during a dinner party, somewhere near Perth, had been the basis of the steampunk story written by Clark Edwards, that had published in "Steampunk Tales" as "The Steam Mapper".)
Knowing that the French would be all too happy to participate in any enterprise that thwarted the British Empire's great worldwide expanse of power, Sir Steven approached Professor Aronnax. He told him in confidence about the amazing information and equipment he possessed.
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Stealth Journeys with the Steam Mapper
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